Being Surrounded

The varieties of green seem to be endless. The wall between me and the world has started filling in. Down through the hollow, color from leaf and bud, soften the angular and gnomic tree-trunks. A glossing over. Consider the way solar energy, water, and trace minerals can do such a thing. I watch it so closely, it will tear a chunk out of my heart to miss two weeks of vital spring. I know, I know, I can see it other places, I could use a change of scene, be good to see old friends. But I am not a nomad, despite my nomadic life. I only function well, as a writer, in my airy and well-lighted cell, remembering at the end of a day. I take notes, in the field, but I can rarely remember what I'm referring to. Meaning is my favorite thought-line, and I follow it, several times a day, into cul-de-sacs or amazing vistas; I can reconstruct lines of reasoning, sometimes, for up to twelve hours. Beyond that, everything is fiction. Nothing makes any sense. Power cutting in and out. Air Conditioner use? Lost two pages. Need to change over to writing in a file that continually SAVES and SEND from that. One page was a rhapsody for Crock-Pot grits. I made an over-night batch of cheese grits with morels that was really quite amazingly good. Maybe not so amazingly when using the best stone ground grits I ever tasted, a double cheddar, butter, and just a few drops of Crazy Andy's Hot Sauce, a goodly pinch of kosher salt and many squeezes of fresh black pepper. I had a small Porterhouse steak, grilled rare, with an herb butter. I go through the lunch garbage from the ladies upstairs, taking stuff home for the dog and sometimes me. Had a couple of nice hard rolls from the trash that I turned into Texas Toast. Probably the best meal of the year so far, but I've not been grilling much yet, and I haven't cooked Baby Back Ribs which some argue is my very best meal. I'm not so sure, except when eating that meal; the sauce IS extraordinary, coming up on its ninth birthday now and reflecting a decade of my life and what I've eaten. It has absorbed sea-changes in styles of marinades. I keep a jar, in the fridge, in which I keep the dregs and cleanings, a little potato or pasta water, whatever marinades might be left-over. Not as much as you might think. because I usually reduce a marinade and use it as a sauce. But I also use The Sauce on slices of pork tenderloin, and I think this is my favorite cut of any meat. I had a small group of thwarted polymaths over for dinner and conversation, this was years ago, and if you've never attended such a convocation, it probably wouldn't mean anything. The conversations were reaching a crescendo, arguments, histrionic presentations, a broken glass or two, and I served dinner, buffet style, four people could sit at the table, everyone else perched on the stairs or sinking into the sofa, and it was deathly quiet, for 12 or 10 minutes, you know; and this squirrel of a guy, a professor of mine from Janitor College, who retired to Ohio for the birds, looked up and said: "God-damn this is good." A pregnant pause. I'm not quite hermetic, I have a job, talk to people at lunch, have social skills, can docent a group through any show. Found myself in a strange position today. A call for Sara or Darren but neither of them were available, and a call got funneled to me. Strange enough because I don't have an office or a phone, but I recognized the name as a lender for the Circus Show, and I explain some things to him; he's in Princeton, and there's a Carter painting I want to see, at Rutgers, he dines with the president. No one else is available, I might as well do this. I don't know who this guy is, I remember the name, he collects art, so I shoot the shit for a few minutes. I've made so much up, I don't know what I've eaten. Me and Alice. I may be going to New Jersey. I need to see this painting at first hand. I'm interested in the model. There's a painting in Naples Florida that I want to see. A nude, that I think is the same model. Very soon, I will know more about this than anyone on the face of the earth, I just process information, my mandate is very narrow. The Public Option should have been there all along. What kind of country do you consider yourself?